Aircraft designers are tasked with developing efficient technologies for controlling an aircraft flight path. In the earliest years of aviation, the Wright brothers used mechanical wires to twist the wing for aircraft roll control. Traditionally, aircraft have used moveable flap-like control surfaces (ailerons) to roll the aircraft or adjust the aircraft attitude.
Recently, aircraft designers have started to devise ways of controlling and using aircraft aero-elastic wing twisting for roll control. This has involved using such components as torque tubes disposed in each wing, and running substantially the full span-wise length of the wings, to assist in twisting the wings to help provide flight control maneuvering for the aircraft. The torque that is applied must overcome the aerodynamic load and the wing torsional stiffness resistance. A large actuation force is required to develop the applied torque.
The torque tube concept requires a very large torsion actuator to twist the wing, and is heavier than a normal wing design.
An additional approach is to use the differential deflection of leading and trailing edge control surfaces to twist the wing, such as has been accomplished with the U.S. Air Force/NASA Active Aeroelastic Wing.
Solutions such as the Air Force/NASA concept are very complex and heavy due to the many control actuators and discrete control surfaces required.
Accordingly, it would be highly advantageous to provide some means for controllably twisting a wing to assist in controlling flight of an aircraft, but without the complexity of prior approaches and/or the large, heavy and expensive wing twisting structures.